Major BCRFA gift enables groundbreaking breast cancer research

This year’s contribution brings the BCRFA's cumulative total donations for research at UAB to nearly $4 million.

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama (BCRFA) has presented its largest donation yet, $550,000, to the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. Since its inception in 1996, the BCRFA has made an annual donation to UAB’s Cancer Center with the proceeds from all fundraising efforts during the previous year, including BCRFA events and corporate and individual donations, as well as sales of specialty breast cancer license plates (Alabama no. 86). This year’s contribution brings the Birmingham-based organization’s cumulative total donations for research at UAB to nearly $4 million.

“These are tough economic times, and federal budget cuts will adversely affect research projects already under way at the Cancer Center,” says Edward Partridge, M.D., director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Philanthropic giving is absolutely critical for continued progress. We are thankful for this substantial gift, as it enables us to receive additional, high-profile grants, as well as recruit and retain world-renowned breast-cancer researchers.”

The Cancer Center is able to generate an average of $16 in federal and other funding for every dollar it receives from charitable contributions.

The BCRFA provides pilot funding for several key breast cancer projects that have potential to translate into new discoveries for cures and disease modifying treatments. Current research projects range from developing a method to prevent DNA repair in breast cancer tumor cells, to creating antibodies against triple negative breast cancer, to studying the genetic content of breast cancer cells collected from women from Africa that will be correlated with the same analysis with African American patients.

Alabama now has more EPSCoR Track II grants than any other state following the award of basic science grants meant to stimulate competitive research in regions of the country traditionally less able to compete for such research funds.

UAB secured more than $328.5 million in federal research funding in 2015, ranking the institution No. 18 among public universities and No. 34 overall in the United States during a year in which UAB’s total research and development expenditures exceeded $516 million.

Christopher S. Brown, Ph.D., former vice president of Research for the University of North Carolina System and director and primary investigator of the NASA/North Carolina Space Grant, tapped to grow UAB’s $500 million annual research portfolio.

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